I wouldn’t trust anything Clive Palmer said on anything - including the reason he gave for instructing his Senators yesterday to vote against scrapping the carbon tax:
The three PUP Senators voted against repealing the carbon tax because of what Clive Palmer called a double cross by the government over an amendment ... to ensure power companies pass on any savings from the repeal…
Palmer says the government didn’t include the amendment today despite saying it would do so.
“It was to be circulated by the time Parliament had come in and it hadn’t been circulated and our senators hadn’t been told and they were left in the dark,” he said.
“I think you’d call it double-crossing people.”
Complete bull. Some might even think it a lie. Phil Coorey explains:
The government and Mr Palmer had agreed to his amendments on Sunday night and the [carbon tax] repeal was supposed to pass Parliament this week. But on Wednesday night Mr Palmer said he wanted some changes and presented them to the government at 9.15am.
The government agreed but Mr Palmer was cranky that the revised amendment had not been distributed to all senators, even though that was his job, and he threatened to pull his support.
Then it was noted the new 250 per cent penalty constituted a tax and the Senate is not allowed to pass such a law without it first being passed by the House of Representatives. Mr Palmer rejected an offer by the Senate Clerk to reword the amendment and have the package put through the Senate. Instead, he insisted on the whole lot starting again in the lower house on Monday.
Thee was no double-cross by anyone except Palmer himself. Dennis Shanahan: Palmer’s actions in directing his senators not to vote for their own amendments and to continue levying the carbon tax on electricity are unsustainable.
He killed the repeal yesterday by his own volition. There was no government “double-cross’’ nor any “conspiracy’’. Tony Abbott and his Senate leader Eric Abetz have been embarrassed and pilloried as a result of Palmer’s directive, which appears to be little more than a tactic to allow Palmer himself to take centre stage in the House of Representatives next week. Graham Richardson says dealing with Clive Palmer is impossible, and the Government may die trying: Never in politics has there been a more unpredictable individual. His capacity to forcefully argue against something he proclaimed so solemnly a week ago is already in evidence. Last week the government’s direct action on climate change was a bunch of old cobblers. Yet this week that same policy gets a tick from Palmer.
There can be no trust or goodwill with a man like Palmer. He will remain enigmatic and erratic....
In the interim, the government can’t function without Palmer’s personal approval… It is not too big a stretch to suggest that the fate of the paid parental leave scheme, the Medicare and pharmaceutical co-payments, the Newstart cuts for the young, the change in indexation arrangements for pensions and the changes to Family Tax Benefit A and B all rest in Palmer’s hands…
The price the Abbott government will have to pay to keep Palmer on board for every budget measure may well prove to be way too high. The first test this week was the carbon tax repeal. Apart from some typical grandstanding from our Clive that saw the repeal delayed for a week, the PUP amendments on forcing companies to pass on the savings from the carbon tax abolition caused immediate discomfort…
Niether [Leader of the Government in the Senate Eric] Abetz nor [Environment Minister Greg] Hunt ... could explain what was contained in the Palmer amendments to which they had agreed. Apparently our Clive was annoyed at the announcements by Qantas and Virgin that they would not pass on the full amount of savings produced by the repeal. Both direct and indirect effects are now covered by these amendments but these government ministers had no idea how far they ranged… The ministers didn’t know and you can bet your bottom dollar Palmer doesn’t know either. He is interested only in the publicity. He has little or no interest in the policy.
The Abbott Government now risks being seen as repeating the worst mistakes of the Gillard Government. First, breaking promises. Second, being beholden to a mad fringe - with Labor, the Greens; with the Liberals, Palmer.
A double dissolution election may turn out to be the lesser of two terrible options.
UPDATE
Want an example of Palmer’s word not being worth a cracker?
Here’s one reason he gave yesterday for presenting his last-minute amendment: Announcing his bombshell amendments [to force companies to pass on savings from the carbon tax repeal] on Thursday morning, Palmer said: ”We read this morning that Virgin and Qantas have said they are not going to pass those savings on to consumers, they are just going to absorb them as extra profits. We don’t think that is a reasonable thing.” But last night Palmer claimed his amendment wouldn’t affect Qantas and Virgin, after all:
CLIVE PALMER: Well I think it’s pretty clear what it covers. There’s a definition of an electricity producer and a natural gas producer and it covers anyone that generates or deals with that commodity. It doesn’t cover anyone else.
SARAH FERGUSON: So it doesn’t cover the airlines, it doesn’t cover the supermarkets or anybody else who has carbon tax-associated costs?
CLIVE PALMER: Well, in a reality when - if the cost structure comes down, market forces will bring their costs down by competition… I mean, if Qantas doesn’t want to bring down its savings and pass that on to its consumers, well, one of its competitors will and they’ll have to bring their prices down to compete.
SARAH FERGUSON: You’re not saying that your amendment actually includes those other companies within it? CLIVE PALMER: No. I don’t think it does, actually. But read his hastily written amendment and it does seem to cover airlines: Clause 10 of the PUP amendment – which caused Senate chaos on Thursday and eventually scuttled the government’s hopes of finally passing the carbon repeal bills through the Senate – lists “entities” that are covered by the carbon repeal bill’s laws against “price exploitation”. The list proposed by PUP includes “an individual, a body corporate, a body politics, a partnership, any other incorporated association or body of entities, a trust or any party or entity which can or does buy or sell electricity or gas”.
Palmer says things that are untrue. He causes chaos and then blames others for the mess. He seems to change his mind on a whim and without understanding the consequences of what he proposes.
He is a danger and a disgrace to our Parliament. I do not believe this Government can possibly hope to survive two years of dealing with this man.
UPDATE
Are Palmer’s Senators happy to be treated as idiots and pawns by Palmer? Here he is explaining how his Senators were “mortified” at not seeing what Palmer had concocted: It was very interesting that we didn’t know this [failure to distribute Palmer’s latest amendment] had happened until after our senators actually went into the senate, right? So we were able to get them out, we were able to explain what had happened, they were mortified by it, and they resolved when I last spoke to them that they were going to vote against the repeal of the carbon tax today.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hills and others.)
